Energy Bill Highlights Efficiency and Sustainability Issues

AIArchitect, August 29, 2005 - Energy Bill Highlights Efficiency and Sustainability Issues

I may be skeptical about the dire prognostications about global warming and the human causality, but I am a conservationist at heart. I am pleased the government has finally gotten a strategy together for improving the environment we live in. I cannot stand the environmental programs that tell you what you HAVE to do. I think people get irritable when you tell them what to do. Mandatory recycling here in Lexington, is one of those doomed-to-be-broken laws that people resent, for example. This energy bill does something that should be intuitive for all the left-leaning environmentalists if they had a clear philosophy: it rewards people for doing something.

In much the same way that you want to teach children with positive reinforcement when it works, you need to motivate Americans the same way. For a home owner looking to do some remodelling, there is a $500 potential tax credit for exceeding the Department of Energy's minimum requirements. New homes can get up to a $2000 credit. In our society, money talks. The invention of currency gave all services, ideas, resources and products a comparable value. So, the value of energy conservation is now quantifiable. It can be bought and sold like everything else. In the past, policies have sought to penalize environmentally unfreindly activities, so people did just enough to not get penalized. Now people can do more to get more benefits. You allow people to improve their position by their actions, rather than harm their position by inaction. When you simply set minimum requirements and penalties for not meeting them, then people are not motivated to do more than the minimum. If set rewards for exceeding the minimum then there is a path up as well as down. You give people somewhere to go. Policies with only penalties are analogous to putting people in a room and telling them they'll be killed if they leave the room. Pretty grim situation... No where to go.

I know I'd be a lot more gung ho about my recycling if it meant a reduction in the taxes I pay to have them collect my trash (just a suggestion.) Tax incentives are the way to go if they are designed to provide enough potential benefit for voluntary compliance. Fines and penalties alone are counter-productive when you're trying to improve a situation.

I think this idea ought to be tried elsewhere in American domestic policy as well. If we want people to earn a better living, then reward them for making the effort. For example, if you were on wellfare, and you decided to take classes to learn a new skill, then perhaps you'd be eligible for an increase in your wellfare check? The less you do to improve your life, the less you'll receive. If you take and pass voluntary drug tests, another boost in your benefits. I mean we're always talking about ways to penalize people for behavior but we never think to reward them for it... well the government doesn't.

Way to go George Bush, and the Representatives who crafted this legistlation. I can't believe it's been over ten years since we had an energy policy.